The ones arguing against using filters in commentary don't understand the potential we have to make our scene grow into something bigger and better. If we truly desire to increase the accessibility of our community, not only should we try to appeal to newcomers, we should strive to avoid alienating groups by using potentially offensive speech. Finding a derogatory term inoffensive to you shouldn't matter, that's plain selfish. We need to be more more considerate of others and stop perpetuating in this respect. Potential sponsors don't want to see their brand associated with a person who shows no regard for things like racial slurs, rape, and other derogatory terms. If you want more people to join the scene and smash to blow up into a big esport please understand why this is should be taken seriously. Playing devil's advocate and debating slippery slopes doesn't cut it in the business world. It's either we follow the rules, or stay stuck in the grassroots vortex for life.﻿

what about people who play smash because they enjoy the game? what about people who work a regular job outside of smash? what about people who don't want business & playing video games to mesh into something messy/greedily motivated?

if your concern is money & fame, i can certainly see how censorship based on bogus logic applies. literally anyone can hook up a capture card & start streaming smash on twitch; the only exclusive thing the 'big boys' have is clout. how exactly does forcibly removing perceived threats to your popularity foster an environment of inclusiveness? to me that sounds like the opposite. i think the only people that would be protected by such a mindset are those who seek profit & fame through smash.﻿

+Richtr8 Wrong. You don't want to give people the wrong impression of our scene by saying the wrong things in public. Other esport organizations are way more successful because of their professionalism. VGBootCamp knows this and wants the scene to grow to a whole new level and made the right decision by removing Boss from the mic.﻿

i understand this professionalism = success logic, but i think when it comes to people's personal rights to speak & say how they feel in a room full of people mature enough to understand serious topics like rape & take jokes in context, we as a community should put aside our desire for success & growth & instead focus on how we treat our individuals.

if your idea of community is excluding people from what they love to do for the game based on their word choice, then i'm upset to learn that one of my smash heros would let down a fellow commentator at a time when his words were misunderstood in order to look more professional to sponsors & the public. i was under the impression that you wanted everyone to play & enjoy smash for what it is today, but it seems like it's the opposite. maybe if vgbc & ct had people sign their free speech rights away before they commentate, you'll at least have to show people up front that they have to be PC on the mic. it's sad to see a community that is most famous for the love of the game more become greedy.

as someone who has suffered a sexual assault at age 14, i believe boss was fully within his rights to commentate the game using whatever language he chooses. i think removing him from the mic generates more exclusivity than it could ever hope to alleviate.﻿

+FlamingForce my point isn't that i'm okay with it as a victim & that as such i am the final authority on whether it's okay or not, what i'm saying is that it doesn't make any sense to say you're a going to be more accepting of everyone by excluding people & censoring commentary. if you want the community to be a nice place, just be nice to people. if someone's upset by the word rape because of trauma, i'm sure they can very well step forward & say so right here in this comment box, just like i have. the fact is that whether you care about what boss said or not, it was in no way his intention to say anything mean-spirited or downplaying about rape. his statement actually didn't have anything to do with the concept of rape, when you think about it, so how could it possibly downplay or glorify or say anything about rape at all? if you want to say that people might get 'triggered' by it, my best friend of 6 years is a sufferer of ptsd-related anxiety because of abuse he receives from his parents & cannot be in the same room as a can of aerosol deoderant without having a full-scale nervous breakdown because of his memories, so im pretty sure people can be upset by anything when it comes to something as serious as abuse.﻿

i said that is not my point. it is the opposite. i understand that everyone is different, but this is more about what boss actually said including the context it was said in relative to the claims of his persecutors that we need to censor people to make the community more appealing to corporate sponsors.﻿

it is not boss' responsibility nor is it the responsibility of anyone else on this earth to police what people say or think, nor is fame & fortune a good motive for punishing boss for speaking how he wanted to, especially if you want to talk about making the community look accessible. he didn't say anything offensive. he may as well have said 'don't go down the same alley you got tangerined in' & been kicked off in respect for tangerining victims.

while i was suffering the after effects of my sexual assault, i found it very hard to trust people & sought isolation. i went out of my way to avoid things that reminded me of what happened. i lost a lot of friends who were complicit with the person who assaulted me in hushing things up, because he was a lot more popular than me & fulfilled their desire to be popular. i was pretty much ready to give up & resign myself to a life of recluse & eventual suicide. my mother, who had suffered similar things growing up as a teenager in the 70s in a poor, drug-addled suburb with many alcoholic relatives & crazy people etc. who told me about viktor frankl, a holocaust survivor who despite his horrible conditions was able to find peace & fulfillment. i took down one of his quotes: "a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss" & from that day forward i was well on my way to recovery. creating an exclusive VIP victim's club where people who are injured get more rights isn't a proper treatment for those who have been hurt, it's just a way to perpetuate weakness & spread fear. i would even go as far as to say it makes the rapists out there more powerful in that they can now successfully dismantle people emotionally without even having to touch them, or even exist in the first place when you think about it.﻿

+Richtr8 I don't think it's particularly aimed at not harming those suffering from that kind of trauma. If it were a house rule among participants & spectators, sure you could make that argument. It's very common for a public-facing organization (or whatever) like VGBC to try their best (notice how it wasn't 'bleeped out') to keep their content clean. While it may be an eye-roller when a big deal is made out of stuff like this, it's not out of the ordinary and certainly doesn't need to be philosophically analyzed like we're doing here.﻿

+Josh Walter just because something is commonplace in business, that doesn't mean it has a place in a competitive video game with a niche audience. this just confirms to me that the censorship was done out of a desire to make smash into a money-making industry rather than a video game. vgbc & ct already have a monopoly on smash content & their influence in the smash community is wider than they realise. at this point, i believe it'd be wise to not only look at how smash can have the benefits of being considered a real sport, but also at how it may become something even better. i may use a lot of words, but my philosophy is simple: we all have the same love for smash as a game, but let's not quit our day jobs. work is work for a reason. maybe if certain people in high places in the community didn't wanna exploit smash financially & make a living off of it, they wouldn't feel the need to pull people off the mic. maybe we'd all be happier & this never would've been a problem in the first place.

there's nothing wrong with having no commercial potential if you're happy with your life already before playing/commentating/streaming/archiving footage of/doing whatever to do with video games.﻿

+Richtr8 Appealing to sponsors doesn't have to mean they're being greedy. The truth is money has to come from somewhere to run tournaments, and even Xanadu nights I'm sure. I doubt anyone (with the exception of some career-minded folk) are doing this to make a living. It would be naive to think Smash works that way. I understand what you're saying, but it seems you're taking a more cynical approach when thinking about the motivation behind the push for a professional public-facing attitude. If Gimr thinks a clean channel is what it takes to keep his channel running, so be it. If a clean channel is simply a preference of his, so be it. It's not impeding on anyone's ability to play and love Smash, so why is the sky falling because one stream is censoring some harsh language?﻿

+Josh Walter Allowing one person to speak without thought that could potentially alienate more viewers is selfish. If at the cost of one individuals freedom to say what they please for the sake of the community so be it. Regardless of where you're taking this argument, the perpetrator realized the fault in his actions and acts accordingly on the mic now. No one is trying to lose sponsors that they previously had over allowing obscenities to broadcast to a wide audience of viewers. Mind you there are more than just young adults watching, kids tune in to these streams as well, and I've had parents commend me on trying to maintain professionalism when it comes to streams. We need to think out of the box and realize the community is just more than 16-30 year old men. We have kids, women, LGBT, old folks, religious people, and more tuning in and we have to keep all the different people in mind to not alienate them. That's what working to grow a community is all about.﻿

+xD1x I am fully in favor of an all-inclusive stream, and I think VGBC is promoting the right mindset for that kind of thing. You certainly can't please everyone, but purposefully catering to only one demographic (i.e most smashers) is a step backwards if we're trying to spread Smash as far as it can go. As a side note, I mentioned it would be naive to pursue a career in Smash, but if there were one person to succeed it would be you, so keep truckin' and ignore anyone who says Smash needs to stay underground.﻿